'Officials must be tougher on fraud'

Officials must be tougher on fraud, Barclays trading head says. Following last week's revelation that about 250,000 carbon dioxide allowances worth $4.4 million were improperly transferred after cyber attacks, fraud threatens to undermine the world's largest emissions market, the head of carbon trading at Barclays Capital said in an interview. Carbon trading volumes on Paris' BlueNext exchange fell to the lowest level since Dec. 28 on word of the cyber attacks.
"Without consistent and decisive action by the European Union, the world's flagship carbon market will become mired in fraudulent activity," said Louis Redshaw, managing director of Barclays PLC's investment bank unit (Source: E&E News)

Germany's Federal Environment Agency made known the latest incidence of fraud on Wednesday, two months after Europol revealed that Europe lost about $7 billion in revenue over 18 months due to value-added tax fraud.

The European Commission said it intends to develop stricter Internet security protocols in response to the cyber attacks, although no timeline has been set for their implementation.

"The integrity of the market is of utmost importance to us," BlueNext spokesman Keiron Allen said. "All effort should be made to prevent this from happening again" (Mathew Carr, Bloomberg, Feb. 5). -- GN